England 13, Germany 2, Jamie Stokes 1
Last week I was initiated into the wonderful world of Polish television. If you watched TVP's Wiadomości on Thursday night, and are not in the habit of blinking, you might have seen me. My debut on the nation's television screens lasted about three seconds and required me to say something about football: a subject about which I know slightly less than I do about hydraulic engineering. The idea that all English people are in love with football and will abandon their wives, children and cups of tea for the chance to watch a match is a myth almost equal to London fog.
The report was about the fact that England had been drawn to play Germany in the last 16 of the World Cup. The expectation was that I, as an Englishman, would certainly have daubed myself in red and white face paint and taken to the roofs of Krakow where I would scream "Come on England!" at the top of my lungs day and night until the match was over. In fact I was buying pasta in the supermarket.
The notorious rivalry between the English and German national teams is a self-fulfilling media fiction. It's one of the inevitable stories that crop up in all World Cup tournaments, along with the other inevitable stories about the ball being the wrong shape, the pitch being mined and Argentinian linesmen being in need of corrective eye surgery. It's self-fulfilling because as soon as the media makes a fuss about it all English people, including the 80 percent who have no interest in football at any other time, feel they must watch the match and become outraged when we lose, which we nearly always do. We fully expect to lose against Germany and have no idea what to do when we don't.
The history of England-Germany matches is a long one peppered with dramatic moments. The first recorded England-Germany match took place in 1899 and resulted in a 13-2 victory for England; followed by a 10-2 victory a few days later. The first German team to tour England lost 12-0 and 10-0 in 1901. Unfortunately, England used up its entire allocation of goals against Germany on these two occasions rather than spreading them out more sensibly over the following hundred years. The next legendary England-Germany encounter came in World War I. On Christmas Eve 1915 British and German troops gave up trying to kill each other for a few hours and held a football match in no-man's land. There were 16,000 players on each side and the final score was 634 each: Germany went through on penalties.
Needless to say, none of this was on my mind when the call came from TVP on Thursday afternoon as I mulled over Carrefour penne. Could I appear on camera to comment on the upcoming England-Germany match? "What England-Germany match?" said my brain, "Sure," I heard my mouth saying. "Hey mouth!" cut in brain, "what the hell have you got us into now?" "Don't worry, you'll think of something," quipped mouth, who has always been a tad flippant. I left via the sports aisle, just so I could check football was the one with the big round ball and not the one with the feathery thing.
Appearing on television is a lot less glamorous than I had hoped. I assumed I'd get a ride in a limo and a gin and tonic with Piotr Kraśko in his gold-lined dressing room. I also strongly suspected I would be in close proximity to the dozens of bikini models and Miss Poland contestants that, in my mind, surely inhabit television studios. I was wrong. The location was a bench on Plac Matejki, and it was raining. I trudged there through the puddles and delivered my words of wisdom with wet trousers. TVP very sensibly cut out three quarters of my words of wisdom and left in the part where I said “England-Germany matches should be shown in black and white with a commentary by a Winston Churchill impersonator.” My wife, who appeared in the background of the set-up shot, got three fan emails from people who are familiar with her cabaret appearances. I got an SMS from a friend saying: “You held your umbrella quite well.”
Jamie Stokes
